"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Posted on | January 24, 2017 | Comments Off on The Dialectic of Feminist Failure

Friedrich Engels and the original German edition of ‘The Origin of the Family.’

One of the most predictable insults that liberals direct at their critics is “ignorance.” Liberals consider themselves intellectually superior, and so the fact that you disagree with them is interpreted as proof of your inferiority. Never does a liberal consider the possibility that his antagonist has examined the arguments for liberalism and rejected them.

No, it is only ignorant prejudice that can explain the conservative’s opposition, the liberal believes. Convinced that they are both intellectually and morally superior to others, liberals think of themselves as qualified to tutor the rest of us, as if we are simple-minded children.

When we see headlines like that, we are entitled to ask, where is the evidence that liberals are superior to everyone else? The radical mob that burned that limo were convinced they were striking a blow against Trump’s right-wing agenda. After all, what could more perfectly symbolize “facism” than this luxurious Lincoln limo? But the owner is named Muhammad Ashraf, and the driver was Luis Villarroel. Exactly how did torching this car advance the “progressive” cause?

How much feminist theory have you read? Probably less than I have. You’d have to be a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies to have read as many volumes of this stuff as I’ve plowed through since I started the Sex Trouble project in 2014. You want to talk Judith Butler and Monique Wittig? Mary Daly and Gerda Lerner? I’m thoroughly prepared. And yet at the end of the day, I return to a basic fact: Men and women are different, in ways that are socially significant.
You know who recognized this? Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx’s colleague and co-author of the Communist Manifesto, Engels in 1884 wrote a very important book, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, which is still worth reading today. Despite his anti-capitalist bias (or perhaps, because of this bias), his foray into anthropology forced Engels to confront the inescapable fact that women’s work as mothers is irreplaceable. . . .

Read the rest at The Patriarch Tree. Not only have I read more feminist theory than has the average feminist, but I’ve also read more Marxism than has the average Marxist. Being accused of ignorance by the kind of fools who voted for Hillary Clinton is a compliment, really.